


lungs

by paintmelilacs



Series: valgrace week 2020 [2]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Cigarettes, Drabble, Friends With Benefits, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Light Angst, M/M, Smoking, Underage Smoking, damn somebody get jason a hug before he disentegrates jesus fuck, to lovers almost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:28:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25062367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintmelilacs/pseuds/paintmelilacs
Summary: Leo has never particularly cared for his lungs. Jason doesn’t understand it, but he likes watching.
Relationships: Jason Grace/Leo Valdez
Series: valgrace week 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1812193
Comments: 6
Kudos: 48
Collections: 2020 Valgrace Week





	lungs

**Author's Note:**

> a bit of a cliche interpretation, but i went with cigarette smoke for the third day of vg week :)
> 
> (i didnt do day two (au) because damn am i laxy, but this one seemed easier and a bit more fun. ill release some oneshots into this series but i dont think i should post them to the vg week collection since they dont follow the prompts :)

“No, not like that Jason—other way— _god_ you’re such a fucking idiot.”

Jason flipped the stick around cluelessly, sticking the orange bit between his lips and not the white. He gladly joins Leo on his midnight smoke breaks, but he’s usually not one to partake.

Leo smiled at him, and _by the gods was that smile going to ruin him._ Always looking like he knew something you don’t, his smile was a warning label—hell, _it wasn’t even much of a ‘smile’._ It was a sharp turn of the lips, exposing a shark-like grin that gleamed with malevolence. Pearly white, slightly crooked teeth gleaming under the bronze porch light, he never did get braces....

“There you go.” Leo says, lifting his own cigarette to his lips. 

Now, Jason didn’t like smoking. 

It was a pretty well known fact that the practice didn’t sit right with him. He didn’t like the smell, or the taste, or the way it consumed people’s lives like a fat man with a starved stomach.

And...maybe it was because he could still see her. 

Still, if he dug deep enough into the sea of his memories, he catches glimpses of his mother with a cigarette, sunken-eyed and lifeless, holding it like a lifeline, (when really she should have been holding Jason).

She seemed so real in those moments. Gone in a  second—just like she was in real life too.

But Leo was different somehow. He always had been. 

Maybe it was the fact that the sour smoke, lined with nicotine and arsenic, was almost his element, with the way the smoke held almost a maternal presence; sacred with the way it curled playfully around his face and hands, twirling around him like he was a child, or maybe just an old friend. (And fuck, Jason should just admit that he looked so pretty with the smoke trailing from the corners of his lips)

They seemed so close, like Jason couldn’t pull Leo from It with a microscope and tweezer. One and the same. Kin.

“It’s funny,” Leo says with a small laugh, “When i was a kid, i would run around with my buddies and we’d all scrounge the street for cigarette buts, find the longest ones and smoke ‘em. I mean, it’s super gross looking back on it, but, it just made some good memories, y’know?”

Jason couldn’t relate. He’d been raised by wolves, in a cave, nowhere near the city walks. He just nods anyway. 

“Weren’t you afraid of, i don’t know, ruining your lungs?” Jason asked. It didn’t make sense. Leo so fearlessly smoked the death-stick, meanwhile Jason merely picked at it.

“What is there to ruin?” He sighed and took a drag. “I was born to die anyway. You know what they say, _‘The demigod life is gonna kill us all.’”_ Leo said with a grin.

The morbid fact was that he was right, and that most demigods learn to accept this fortune of death. _And accept it they did_ —what with the way Frank and Reyna died. It’s been nearly three years, but Jason remembers that day, though he wish he didn’t. Back when Leo was MIA (gone without a trace, not even a note) and Piper had moved out from camp back to the mortal world. Back when Jason was all alone (again).

Jason looks at the cigarette again, trying not to picture it as the enemy. He supposes it wouldn’t kill him to try.

Relinquishing care over the matter, Jason sucked the smoke out of the cigarette and paused to let it saturate his mouth, it was acidic and burned his throat a little, but he doesn’t know how he’d deal with the absolute mortification if he coughed in front of Leo. “Mhm. You’d think being half god would get us some sort of discount on the lung cancer thing.”

Leo nodded in agreement.

“Wanna see a trick?” He asked. Jason wasn’t going to say no. 

Leo held his finger at the end of the cigarette and lit it, holding constant fire at the end. Then, he put his mouth to the filter and took a deep breath in so his cheeks were puffed out, playfully swishing his mouth at Jason to get him to laugh.

As Leo exhaled, he breathed fire. Smooth, dark orange flames mixed in with black smoke, tangling around eachother in a way Jason didn’t think possible. _Shouldn’t_ be possible, yet it was. It was beautiful. Intimate. The fire almost behaved like the smoke, curling and weaving with the same elegance, moving with a mind of it’s own. 

“Pretty cool, huh? Took me a couple weeks to learn.”

“Really cool.” Was Jason’s lame reply. He wishes he could come up with more words, but they seem to abandon him when he’s with Leo, especially when they were alone, like he’d caught a foreigner in his mouth. 

“Y’know,” Leo said thoughtfully, “You could probably do some cool smoke tricks too, being the wind whisperer and all that.”

“Wind whisperer?”

“Yeah, like—uh, fuckin....Pochahontas, or some shit.”

Jason just shook his head with a chuckle. Leo’d never seen the movie, and it showed.

Leo almost seems to get lost in the smoke, sitting there on the old wooden patio, hugging his war-torn army jacket tighter on his stick-thin frame, looking like he’s a million miles away. The black hoodie he had on under his jacket was flecked with sawdust, much like the stars in the night sky.

Dark brown curls puffed out bigger than his head, defying gravity in a way that Jason couldn’t define, always covering his eyes. Fuck, those eyes—Jason knew they could never be by a god’s design—they were too beautiful for that.

Strange tattoos marked his skin, black ink tracing up his neck and bits peeking out on wrists and hands, something that Jason never got to ask him about, because he had gotten them somewhere in between the time he’d left camp, along with a silver glinting stud on his nose. 

He didn’t notice Jason’s blatant stares (or at least pretended not to). It must be nice to have that escape.

Jason forcefully rips his eyes off Leo, instead settling to stare at the lines in the wood boards below him. It would be nice if he could do that. Get lost. 

He wants that for himself. To be so caught up in euphoria he forgets who he is for a brief, blissful moment, sadly ironic as it is. Jason wants....he wants....

And gods, _Jason wants Leo to love him like that._

To _need_ him the same way Jason does, to breathe him in like he was life, to dance with him, like they were _one and the same._ He wants to pull someone so _tight_ and so _close_ it bridges the gap that had been carved out of him. 

He gets so caught up in his own thoughts he barely registers the warm smaller hand wrapping around his own. 

A small breath escapes Jason, one he hadn’t known he was holding, as he turns to look at Leo, who’s face was turned away. Still, under the glowing lights in the dark he could see the rosiness creep up his cheeks. 

“Leo....” He started, but the scentence went nowhere, dissolving into the crisp night air.

Leo shifts so that he’s sitting next to Jason, and he tilts his head up at him, eyeing him beneath a veil of dark curls—so close he could count the faint freckles on his cheeks—and Jason _knows_ what happens next.

He meets Leo halfway, parting his lips and letting himself bask in how the boy’s mouth worked so well against his, like he was custom fit. He tastes like sugar and nicotine, a devilish combination that has Jason feeling like he just willfully swallowed cyanide. 

And he hates it because this _isn’t_ the first time he’s kissed Leo—it’s a royalty of their little fucked up mess of a relationship, sowed out of pain and the need for a warm body—but they would never talk about it. Instead they just shroud themselves under a blanket of smoke and smog and _misery_ , because Leo can’t trust anyone, and Jason won’t decide what to do about it.

Temporary is beautiful, though. It makes fleeting kisses even more breathless, like the feeling of free-falling, with the knowledge that it won’t last forever. Like the knowledge that they’re burning up, smoldering their lungs with black, black smoke. The color of ink and lonely hearts, and it _burns_ , with an eternal fire that’s been burning since the birth of the gods and the boiling of the ocean _and dare he stamp it out now—_

But he won’t, because Jason can taste the leftover smoke from Leo’s soft lips tainting him like forgotten poison, and he wants it, regardless of one day where his breathing just might _stop_. He wants this forever, forever, _forever_ _forever—_

Leo pulls away.

“What is it?” Jason breathes, still too high off the euphoria of their shared lips.

There’s so much uncertainty filling Leo’s eyes, right between the hellfire and memories of war, like he’s about to do something reckless, something that will end _badly._ Jason wants that uncertainty _gone_ , wants _something else_ to fill those pretty brown eyes, so he doesn’t have to look at his reflection. 

His lips are a little swollen, and he bites them briefly.  “I love you.” He blurts.

_I love you._ The words tumble in Jason’s mind as his world is flipped upside down and set aflame.

“I just....wanted you to know that....Y-you dont have to say it back, I understand if you don’t want....whatever this is. It’s weird, but, i like you.” The boy’s lips harden into a line and he avoids Jason’s eyes, like he’d turn him to stone for simply saying what’s on his mind.

And Jason _knows_ when he shouldn’t stay silent, and this is something that doesn’t need to be weighed out in his mind; Leo is a certainty, and Jason answers, for once in his life, without hesitation.

“I love you too.” The words flow like deltas from his lips, explaining the hundreds of streams and rivers of his thoughts with one sentence. 

And he pulls Leo close, so close he can feel his body heat through his clothes, and smell the cigarette smoke in his hair, and press his skinny frame into his own in efforts to _finally close that fucking gap._

And Jason and Leo were going to burn, and they were going to do it _together._

**Author's Note:**

> somebody get this mans THERAPY.
> 
> reviews 😫🤤🤤


End file.
